Episode75
Oz's Grasslands We picked things up mid-round battling with the Aglea 'Dreamon' (Dream Demon) in her Spider Funhouse of Horrors. Late in the round, Aglea had us all covered in HR Spiders while hammering us with direct-to-brain 'scraping' damage. With Jason unavailable to play due to a heavy workload, the Arbiter decreed that OJ must've failed a Mind Save, so he ran screaming from the haunted House. The plan was for the rest of us to to restrain her long enough to cut her out of the dream with The Dream Knife, (if Oz could figure out how it worked). The spiders were pretty nasty so as soon as Oz had recovered from getting knocked prone - again - he imposed his will on Aglea's dream. His intention was to cut off her 'spider power', but as it turned out that we were currently in some kind of elemental-spider-dream when he did that the small pocket of non-spiders that Aglea was maintaining began to collapse in on us! As spiders began to pour in from all sides it was clear that sticking around would have been very unhealthy! We agreed to combine on a Dream escape to pull everyone into Oz's dream. A very timely critical success by Oz transported us all back to his dream along with a confused-looking Aglea. She was still dangerous as ever, though, since she simultaneously shook off the spider-power lockdown Oz had just applied. Oz's dream resembled a rolling grassland with roving herds of wild horses in the distance. Note: It only took a moment for our skilled Amarbiter to move our combat to this new dreamscape in Maptool. The fight continued in this new terrain but with less spiders and more opportunities to back-stab. Pete opened up on Aglea with his DR 95 Prototype Rifle Rounds, but she looked like she was about to go down after the first hit, and not knowing what effect that would have on her when she couldn't wake up, he eased off on his assault. Pete then tried to catch Aglea inside his nano-portable Wall, but without a Natural 20 it looked hopeless. It was around this point that we started to focus on trying to stun or otherwise 'incapacitate' her. Our first attempt was a combined party 'dream stun' but Aglea split herself into three incarnations just beforehand, so we only managed to stun a single one. Pete figured that he could take out one or both of the others to further improve our chances, and proceeded to critically destroy one. Unfortunately, this caused the destruction of all three and left a bleeding, crumpled Aglea laying in the grass. D'oh! We were worried that she would die/escape but there was no need for concern, since she immediately rose back up, now fully transformed into her Dreamon aspect. Being a Dreamon, she was much, (much!), tougher. Her attacks/defends were way better and, even worse, her Dream Contests were significantly amped up! Once she started doing 120DR per attack it became really obvious that we needed to pull together as a team and combine our dream strength to shift the balance. Otherwise, she would whittle us down one by one and then dance over our dream corpses. We combined to devolve her back into her regular human aspect from her Dreamon aspect. We weren't sure if this would work, but figured it was worth a try since she was still new to Dreamon-form and the alternative was ludicrous amount of Dream Knife hits, (estimated to be a minimum of 16!). With her back in 'human' form, a desperate plan was hatched. Forever after known as the "Squirrel in a Box" plan, it involved trapping Aglea within Pete's wall-robot with Kiwi inside. Thankfully, Oz didn't need also be inside since his 'back hole' could be moved to the Dream Knife allowing him to attack transdimensionally from afar. Pete could also still attack into the box due to his tech stuff, (also known as 'Weapon Ports'). With our new strategy in place we set about trying to KO her so that we could get attacks through her formidable Acro-Defend. Unfortunately, this meant getting an attacks through her formidable Acro-Defend with a -8 penalty for the super Called-Shot! Trying an alternate tack, we resorted to the combined Dream Strike KO, (with Kiwi leading the combined dream contest since Oz had his empower nullified). We got lucky and managed to KO her! This allowed us to put her in the Box with Kiwi, but as soon as Oz hit her with the Dream Knife, she of course woke back-up! Then Pete scored a lucky hit, and was able to KO her again At this point we figured out that the only appropriate course of action was for Kiwi and Pete to continually KO her every Segment, while Oz simultaneously dream cut her until she was defeated, ('only' 4 hits required when she was in 'Human' form). It was a tough battle that lasted longer than expected but we did it. Aglea the Dreamon was surgically removed from the Dream and forever defeated. Doing so marked a major achievement; we had finally completely eliminated Aglea from the galaxy! After the battle we checked on her dream victims that all seemed to be sleeping peacefully and then went to share news of our victory with Grey Nut. She was very impressed and especially so considering we hadn't even used the full power of the Dream Knife, (extra dream actions on a simultaneous separate Initiative Order!). Maybe next time Oz will ask how to use the legendary weapon before taking it into battle, (Worst Dream Champion ever!). Then again, everything worked out, so maybe not. After waking up, Oz caught up with some folks. Gus was happy to hear he could sleep again but sad that Aglea was truly gone. He decided to go join the army and forsake his past. At least he agreed to help persuade Gavril to help quell the Hubertus rest before doing so. Maybe Oz will persuade him to stay active since he could be handy. Oz also spoke with Zargax who revealed that Yaw is a super-powerful Reaver that is still alive and able to assume Shadow Reaver form simultaneously as still being a Regular, (Super-) Reaver somehow due to his awesome-power. He's in the Proto-Galaxy, but still actively manipulating events in our galaxy. He knows we have the Star. He may even be the 'most powerful' Reaver that we need to defeat. It seems likely he need be dealt with in some way before the end. Zargax also mentioned that having transdimensional nexii near Veilos and other key worlds was dangerous and we may want to block them somehow (Star miracle?). We spent a Block heading out on the Hound with the Veilos Scientists so that Pete could collapse a Star for the new Cargo Gates for the Fister Facility, then called it a night. Logger 11 Academic 1 Dream Combat 33 Generic Back to Space Junk Log Category:Space Junk